


The Hardest Time to be Alive

by ShinSolo



Category: 30 Seconds to Mars
Genre: Bad Dreams, M/M, Past Jared/Cameron, Past Jared/Matt, References to Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 20:54:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinSolo/pseuds/ShinSolo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started as a question, followed by an answer, that progressed into a game. And in a way, it had never been meant to be anything more, yet more it became just the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hardest Time to be Alive

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [<授权翻译> the hardest time to be alive by ShinSolo](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1816807) by [sunshinedark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinedark/pseuds/sunshinedark)



> “Night is the hardest time to be alive . . . It lasts so long, and four A.M. knows all my secrets.” - Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite.

Four A.M. found Jared drenched in cold sweat, his blankets tangled around his legs. Behind his closed eyes, he dreamed about a flock of barnacle geese hatched from timbers rotting in the sea. Unable to find land, the birds turned into fish and swam till their fins scraped the dark clay of the ocean floor. The birds were so happy, thinking they’d finally found land, that they forgot they were still fully submerged beneath the deep waters of the ocean. They spread their fins, scales falling off as feathers reemerged, and drowned themselves as they tried to call back and forth to one another, their lungs filling with salt water the very moment their gills faded. Jared screamed out, wanting to warn the remaining birds to stay fish, not to lose their gills, but seaweed wrapped around his throat and choked him. As blackness began to set in, Jared swore he heard his grandmother’s voice, scolding him for eating fowl during Lent.

 

Still dreaming, Jared awoke to find himself in a trench. It was raining and gun shots could be heard a little too close for comfort. A man crouched next to him, wiped the mud from his face with the back of his wool sleeve and Jared gasped when he realized it was Tomo. Someone was passing out hand rolled cigarettes. Matt suddenly appeared with a lit match.

 

“Mind being the third?” he asked and Jared stared back at him in confusion, watching as he lit his own cigarette and then Tomo’s. When Matt held the match out to him, Tomo grabbed his wrist, knocking the small flame into the dark water at their feet.

 

“Never light three cigarettes with one match,” Tomo said, his voice as cold as the night air around them. No one but Jared noticed Matt burst into flames and melt away, like a photograph thrown against hot coals.

 

Arms wrapped around Jared’s waist from behind, hands parting the front of his shirt and pressing against his chest and stomach. Jared called out for Shannon to help him, fearful that the dreadful Ankou of Brittany had finally caught up with him. Teeth bit into the crook of his neck and he heard his name softly whispered against his skin.

 

The clock on the nightstand read 4:42 A.M. and Jared awoke only long enough to see the number glaring back at him like blood red eyes. Someone else was in his room, but darkness reclaimed him before he could roll over or scream.

 

******

As a child, Jared had always been aware of Shannon’s hands. When he fell down, they lifted him back to his feet. If he was sick, they pressed palms to his forehead, held a glass of juice steady, urged him to take ‘just one more sip…’ On days when they were left alone, their mother away at work or play, it was Shannon’s hands that managed to reach the buttons on the microwave and locked and unlocked the deadbolt on the front door. They wiped his tears, untangled his shoe strings, gently wrapped around his wrists and pulled him inside and out of the rain. Jared knew the feel of his brother’s hands long before he knew him by sight or smell.

 

When he grew older—not yet a teenager, but still not quite a child—Shannon’s hands drew away and Jared began taking care of himself. No longer did he need his brother fretting over him when he scraped his knee, he could grit his teeth and even curse under his breath. When it came to lunch, he could make his own PB&J sandwiches. And as long as the sun was up, his friends near, Jared pushed Shannon away, taking pride in being independent and ‘grown.’

 

But in the middle of the night, after his mother had shut the bedroom door and gone to sleep, the nine-year-old little boy that Jared was came out. In the middle of the night, nothing felt better than the feel of Shannon’s hands moving over his body. They were always warm and already calloused even at age ten, a striking contrast to the cold cotton sheets of their shared bed. And even during the darkest dreams, they were all he needed to remind himself that he wasn’t really being chased by horrid dinosaurs or falling into another shark infested ocean, that he was alive and safe, that his older brother would never let anything happen to him.

 

Shannon’s hands used to be all he needed to roll over, cuddle closer, and fall back to sleep.

 

******

 

“Wake up, ol’ man,” Jared muttered, still more than half asleep. The alarm clock had been going off for a good fifteen minutes and he couldn’t understand why Shannon hadn’t already turned it off. But when he opened his eyes, he was alone. A few seconds passed before he remembered that Shannon’s room was down the hall, that he was now thirty-seven years old and he hadn’t officially shared a room with his brother in twenty years.

 

Even so, Jared swore he could smell his brother’s deodorant on the sheets and the faint scent of cigarettes that so often followed Shannon still lingering in the air. He sighed, stifled a yawn, and hit snooze. Nine A.M. was too early to be awake, yet awake he was. And from the sounds of the house around him, he wasn’t the only one. A toilet flushed, followed by the creak of a door. Footsteps could be heard on the stairs.

 

_Shannon…_

 

His brother’s name once again surfaced in his mind and Jared groaned knowing he wasn’t going to be able to fall back to sleep any time soon.

 

The floorboards were cool beneath his bare feet. And when he stretched upon getting out of bed he winced in pain, frowning at a bruise on the back of his shoulder that he knew had not been there when he’d gone to sleep.

 

“Damn…” he breathed as he made his way down the hall toward the kitchen. He’d only been awake ten minutes and the day already seemed to be against him.

 

Thankfully, there was a pot of coffee already made and waiting for him. Jared poured himself a cup—black: no sugar, no cream—and brought the cup to his mouth, inhaling the rich aroma. When he turned around he nearly sloshed the hot liquid all over himself, suddenly finding himself face to face with his brother. He hadn’t even realized he had been in the same room.

 

Neither of them were quick to speak and Jared used what might have been an otherwise awkward silence to study Shannon without consequence. He seemed too tired—even for the early hour—as if he’d been up all night and hadn’t actually gone to bed several hours before Jared had. His face was shadowed with stubble and while such a thing wasn’t unusual for Shannon, the dark bruise that was forming on his left cheek was. He wore no shirt and when he brought his hand up, taking Jared’s cup from him and setting it down on the counter behind him, Jared could clearly see what appeared to be claw marks on his right forearm.

 

“What happened to you?” Jared asked, taking a step toward his brother only to have him take one away from him. “Shannon?”

 

“Did you sleep well?” Shannon responded, the coldness of his voice catching Jared off guard.

 

“I… Well enough, but Shan…”

 

“You called me Matt,” he spat the words at Jared as if they’d soured in his mouth like curdled milk, his eyes narrowing and fists clenched at his sides as if daring Jared to not remember.

 

Jared’s back touched the refrigerator before he even realized he’d backed away, his lips parted and head slowly shaking back and forth in both confusion and disbelief.

 

“I did not!” he said even though he knew Shannon didn’t lie—not to him at least.

 

“You were screaming my name, J. I went into your room but I couldn’t fucking wake you up.” Shannon’s eyes broke contact with Jared’s, his voice softening just a little as if he knew he was being unfair despite his anger. “I tried to hold onto you, like I used to do when you had night terrors before… When I, when I tried to, to comfort you, like before, you cursed me in your sleep. You slapped me and told Matt to ‘get the fuck off’ you.”

 

Jared closed his eyes and tried to remember anything about last night, but all he came up with was fish sprouting feathers and a sound that reminded him of mortars on the 4th of July. There was nothing about Shannon, no memories of Matt.

 

“What do you mean by you ‘tried to comfort’ me?” he asked as he opened his eyes, still in a semi state of shocked about finding out that he’d been the one to hurt his own brother and couldn’t even remember doing so.

 

“Goddamnit, J! We’re not fucking kids anymore. You know very well how I tried to comfort you.” His hands were shaking as he spoke, his brown eyes still refusing to meet Jared’s. “I’ve laid awake at least once a week for the past two and a half years now, listening to you scream and cry out when you should be sleeping soundly like the rest of L.A. I can’t take it much longer. If me, if me touching you, if me kissing you and fucking holding on to you is the only thing that makes your dreams go away then by God let me!”

 

“No,” Jared answered too quickly, his eyes squeezing shut once again as if he was willing his very eyelids to become dams, holding back his emotions and maybe even his tears. “You know we can’t go back there, that it took us way too long to get away from that…”

 

“There was nothing wrong with it!” Shannon interrupted. “Any relationship is right if it is conducted properly and acted on because of love and goodness. You only started thinking there was something awful about it when Matt told you he didn’t like it and wasn’t standing for it. Because you didn’t have the balls to stand up to him!”

 

“You’ve got some nerve quoting Plato to me now, and leave Matt out of this. I ended what was happening because it wasn’t right, because it was doing more harm than good between us,” Jared’s voice wavered ever so slightly, but he didn’t back down. His hands reached out toward Shannon, forcing him to look him in the eye.

 

“If memory serves it was you who first quoted that same thing to me during an almost identical argument!” Shannon pulled away from Jared’s hold, shoving him back against the fridge and away from him. “Or did your darling Matt make you forget that too?”

 

“I was sixteen and drunk!”

 

“You were sober and begging me to suck you off so you could get some fucking sleep!”

 

Silence fell between them as they attempted to stare each other down, both wounded by the other’s words. The tension between them at that moment was almost unbearable and in the end it was Shannon who broke first, it always was.

 

“One day you’re going to fall into a dream you won’t be able to wake up from and you’re going to need me, J.” he said, backing away, his voice weak in defeat, yet surprisingly still full of nothing but love toward his brother. “I just hope that when that time comes you’re man enough to stop being so stubborn and let me help you.”

 

He retreated to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him and leaving Jared suddenly alone with only a lukewarm cup of spilt coffee to keep his thoughts at bay. Jared picked the cup up off the counter, took a single sip from it, and then threw it at the opposite wall as hard as he could. When the cup didn’t shatter, simply bounced off and rolled across the floor, drops of coffee falling down like acid rain, Jared slid to the floor and began to cry.

 

******

 

It started as a question, followed by an answer, that progressed into a game. And in a way, it had never been meant to be anything more, yet more it became just the same.

 

“When you, y’know, does anything like, come out?”

 

Shannon paused and looked up at his little brother, his eyes widening when he realized exactly what it was that Jared had just asked him.

 

“Ew,” he said with an uneasy laugh. “What the hell have you been watching?”

 

Eleven-year-old Jared went quiet a few moments before shrugging, his cheeks flushed red with embarrassment. He hadn’t really meant to ask his question out loud, it just sort of slipped out while he was supposed to be doing his math homework, while Shannon was idly carving his name into their kitchen table with the tip of a pencil with broken lead.

 

“Hey, talk to me, J,” Shannon coaxed, scooting his chair closer and turning sideways so he was facing him.

 

Jared didn’t generally ask questions like that without a reason, unless something was bothering him. In fact, until then they had only discussed anything of a sexual nature together once before, and that had been two years ago when Shannon had been the age Jared was now and Jared had only just turned ten. Their mother had brought one of her boyfriends home with her, forgetting her sons were at home that weekend and not at their grandmothers like they usually were. Jared had woken up from a bad dream, scared someone was trying to hurt mama and Shannon had pulled the blankets over their head and explained what little he knew about sex to the frightened child, telling him that sometimes grownups took all their clothes off and hugged each other really tight and that mama wasn’t being hurt, she was just too happy to not make noises. Shannon had laughed really hard, obviously surprised when his brother had looked him dead in the eye and said, ‘Oh, so they’re just having sex.’ They’d gone back to sleep soon afterwards, the incident never brought up again.

 

“Jared?”

 

When Jared finally met Shannon‘s eyes, he was sure he would end up in tears. Shannon reached out toward him with both hands, grasping his shoulders and gently shaking him, urging him to talk.

 

“Cause yesterday,” the younger boy began, looking away from Shannon as if he didn’t want to be seen. “Something kinda… cameout…”

 

Shannon’s eyes widened even farther than they had just a few moments earlier and he grabbed Jared again, this time shaking him a little harder.

 

“You lie!” he exclaimed, his voice an excited whisper. Jared had no way of knowing that even at thirteen his brother had only ejaculated a handful of times, and even that hadn’t started till recently.

 

“I don’t lie! I don’t!” Jared protested, pulling away from his brother and crossing his arms over his chest defiantly. “You know I don’t lie.”

 

Shannon had grinned and leaned closer to his younger brother, his eyes narrowed and voice lowered to a mere breath even though no one was around that could possibly have heard what he said.

 

“Then why don’t you prove it.”

 

It had all been downhill from there. It took Jared over a month to be able to produce something in front of his brother, and by then Shannon had already been helping him along. By then Jared had already discovered that if he fell asleep right after orgasm—with his lips still tasting of his brother’s saliva and occasionally of his brother’s come—the dreams that had tormented him all his life wouldn’t come. Together, he thought, the two of them had found a way to chase away the darkness for good. Jared had never been very good at sleeping alone since.

 

******

 

The boat was leaking and no one had anything to plug up the holes with. Matt was softly singing to himself, but Jared could just barely make out any of the words over the roar of the ocean.  _Monday’s child is fair of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace…_ Jared tried to sit up, wanted to hear everything everyone was saying, but Matt pushed him back down to the bottom of the small row boat and kept singing.  _Wednesday’s child… Thursday’s child… Friday… Saturday…_  The words went in and out. Matt’s hands were over his eyes, tracing over his earlobes, telling him to be quiet, not to fret, but his eyes were solid black and blank. Dead.

 

“What about Sunday’s child?” Jared begged, pushing him off him and sitting up. The boat tilted and swayed. “I was born on Sunday!”

 

“Why, Jared. Haven’t you heard? The child that is born on the Sabbath Day, is blithe and bonny, good and _gay_ ,” Matt grinned when he said the last word and Jared screamed when he saw that the inside of his mouth was black and rotten. Fleas spilled from his lips as he spoke.

 

“We’re all gonna die out here, aren’t we?” a voice said from behind him and Jared was shocked to see Cameron sitting on the other side of the boat. Her dress pure white, the brim of her hat wide to keep the sun off her face. She glanced at him with a frown before looking back at Matt. “Well, aren’t we?”

 

“No, of course not, love,” Matt answered her with a smirk. “The sharks following, they’re only here for Jared.”

 

“Then by all means, toss him overboard. If that’s all it’ll take to make them go away then what are you waiting for?” She looked back at the sharks in disgust and pushed one back away from the boat with the tip of her umbrella. “Come on, Matt. Don’t you love me?”

 

“Stupid bitch,” Matt muttered under his breath, pulling Jared back to him by his hair. He seemed pleased when Jared called out in pain. “Can’t you see he’s not dead yet?”

 

She smiled, perfectly straight teeth barely showing between her parted lips.

 

“Then go ahead and kill him.”

 

Jared screamed at the top of his lungs when he suddenly found himself in his coffin. The lining inside of it was made of satin and the coffin’s lid pressed down on him as if trying to rob him of his very last breath.

 

“Hail Mary, full of grace…” Jared began, his eyes squeezing shut. He hasn’t said his rosary in years, but the prayer left his lips as easily as if he’d said it ten times every day of his life. Something pressed against his mouth as he fought back, his nails clawing at the wooden walls around him. Afraid his moment of death had finally caught up with him, Jared skipped ahead to the end of the prayer, not wanting to die without having completed it at least once. “…Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death!”

 

“Jared!” Hands grabbed a hold of his shoulders, shaking him and pulling him closer at the same time. And the satin pillows of the coffin faded into his own bed sheets, the weight on top of him lessening, becoming softer and more familiar. “Let me!”

 

Jared’s eyes shot open, blue locking with brown even in the darkness of 4 A.M. and without hesitating or over thinking; Jared gave into the one thing he’d been denying himself for so long. He opened his mouth, wrapped his arms around his older brother and kissed him deeper than he’d ever kissed anyone else before in his life. Shannon reacted immediately, melting against Jared. His hands tangled in Jared’s hair, pulled at the fabric of his shirt, ran down his sides, and gripped his hips. Not even half an hour later—after Shannon’s hands had touched every single part of his body and he’d been brought to orgasm not once, but twice—Jared fell asleep to the lull of Shannon’s soft kisses and the sound of his brother’s heartbeat coming down in perfect time with his own. For the first time in years, Jared dreamed of blank canvases ready to be painted and warm summer rain that smelled of lemon and rose water—the first good dream he’d had in years and years.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written 12/02/2009.


End file.
